My picasa widget hasn’t been updated for quite a long time. Since then, there was a new widget API – the old widget worked without any problems because the new API is backward compatible, however those API calls are now deprecated. Meanwhile, I’ve received a lot of comments regarding the plugin and I’ve used that input to reshape the features of the update. Thank you all for your comments.
The new widget is a complete rewrite of the old widget. Earlier all options for plugin was in the widgets section. The new version adds a new options page to the “Settings” menu. Once you have installed the plugin, make sure to set your username on the picasa settings page. Once this is done, It’ll download the photo information and cache them. I’ve also added an option to list out the albums in this plugin. So, once the username is set, you can go to the widgets page and add any number of widgets – there you’ll get a list of albums, photo size and number of photos for each widget instance.
If you have uploaded new photos to the picasa albums, you can go to the options page and click on the “Refresh Cache” button to download new photos. Even if you have forgotten to do this, the photos will automatically get updated based on the cache lifetime you have set.
That’s all the features for now – I’ll add more features along the way once the base functionality of stable. Please remember, this is pretty much a complete rewrite, there might be few bugs here and there. If you have found any bugs, make a small comment here 
#1 by Patrick Daly on October 18th, 2009
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I’m getting the following error when I save the Settings page with my username:
“Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 56623104) (tried to allocate 786441 bytes) in *****/wp-includes/functions.php on line 959″
**** = removed absolute path
#2 by www.BartusKN.nl on October 18th, 2009
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Thanks !!! I love the update, it’s much quicker. Is it possible to use this plugin in combination with lightbox instead of opening in the same page.?
Thanks for the update again!!!
#3 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 18th, 2009
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@patrick,
You’ll have to increase the memory size of PHP. The simplePie RSS fetcher provided by wordpress APIs is consuming too much resources.
@Bartus,
Yes, it should be possible – Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try to implement this in the next release.
~ Sandaruwan
#4 by Omi Azad on October 18th, 2009
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This is my Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/aakefazad
But the new release is not working for me. Any idea why?
#5 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 18th, 2009
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Omi,
I’ll need bit more information. Can you see the list of albums in the widgets? Did you try refreshing the cache?
~ Sandaruwan
#6 by Marko on October 18th, 2009
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Hi,
After renewing the version plugin doesn’t work. Receiving following error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /www/apache/domains/www.hong.ee/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/picasa-wordpress-widget/picasa.php on line 197
What could be the solution?
#7 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 18th, 2009
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Marko,
What is your php version? it seems like you are using an older version which doesn’t support “instanceof” operator. Try removing 197 and 198 lines – those are just for error handling.
~ Sandaruwan
#8 by Geert Van Den Broeck on October 18th, 2009
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@Marko
I’ve got the same error line and change the code to this.
// get the photos RSS feed
// $rss2 = fetch_feed(str_replace(“entry”,”feed”,$guid).”&kind=photo”);
// if ($rss2 instanceof WP_Error) // download error
continue;
Now it’s working fine
#9 by Thomas Dyhr on October 18th, 2009
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Hello..
I am sorry to say so, but your recent update crashed my WordPress 2.8.4 on two different installations. I think you a problem of Fatal Error nature..
With kind regards, Thomas
#10 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 18th, 2009
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Seems like “instanceof” operator is giving out errors in some PHP installation. I’ve just replaced the operator with method_exists function and committed the changes to wordpress plugins database. It’ll be up in about 15 minutes.
Try this version and let me know if there are any errors.
@Thomas,
It would be helpful if you can enable error reporting and check where the bug appears.
~ Sandaruwan
#11 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 18th, 2009
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Thickbox similar to lightbox is included by default in wordpress. So, I’ve added thickbox in the latest version (1.3.2).
You can easily modify the code if you want to support lightbox.
~ Sandaruwan
#12 by MrCarney on October 19th, 2009
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Awesome job. Thank you very much!!
#13 by www.BartusKN.nl on October 19th, 2009
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Type your comment here
I’m a rooky with coding. Can you pleaaase help me out with that man ? I really appreciate all the work you’ve done so far on the plugin.
I think the lightbox isn’t working because the plugin links to an image directly without using “.jpg”-extension.
#14 by Rilling on October 19th, 2009
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Thanks for the update. Love the support for multiple widgets.
1) Can I have multiple ID’s as per previous version?
2) Can I have multiple albums as per previous version?
3) Can you skip the title if it’s blank? That will let me merge multiple albums, and may be an answer for #2.
4) Can you add code to ask for and handle multiple columns?
P.S. Just tried the Thickbox. Pretty cool as well.
regards
#15 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 19th, 2009
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@Bartus,
If you look at lines 67 to 70, you’ll see that there are thickbox content. Convert that into lightbox. Then, once you click thickbox option in the widget settings, it’ll point to a jpg file
@Rilling,
1. You can still add multiple username separated by ‘;’ character. I’m going to improve the interface for this one.
2. I’ll implement multiple albums in a future release. In the earlier version, mutliple albums confused the users – the username syntax to be precise.
3. Again, future release – I’ll keep this in mind
4. This is going to be bit hard. Multiple columns have to be styled using css, but each theme is different. What I can do is to provide an interface to mention the CSS classes so that users can add them to themes. But then again, it would be much easier for them to directly edit the plugin code
~ Sandaruwan
#16 by ravi on October 19th, 2009
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when iam setting username iam getting following error
Fatal error: Call to undefined method WP_Error::get_items() in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\picasa-wordpress-widget\picasa.php on line 199
#17 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 19th, 2009
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That means your username is invalid. I’ve updated the plugin to show an error message if the username is invalid.
This could also mean that your picasa albums are not publicly accessible.
~ Sandaruwan
#18 by www.BartusKN.nl on October 19th, 2009
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Thanks man! It’s working !! Thanks!
#19 by Patrick Daly on October 19th, 2009
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Pertaining to my first comment, don’t you think this should be handled differently? Otherwise, those with lots of photos in their Picasa accounts are penalized.
My suggestion: don’t download the entire account’s photos. Instead, grab the list of albums first and then let the user select which albums they’d like to use.
#20 by Omi Azad on October 20th, 2009
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My problem is same as Patrick Daly above. I know what is your answer, but my point is the older version was working find and still working. My hosting company will not upgrade the memory and that is not my server. Do you have any solution?
#21 by Sandaruwan Gunathilake on October 20th, 2009
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@Patrick and @Omi,
Try this solution : http://wordpress.org/support/topic/290553
It might work for you. Anyway, I’ll try to optimize the memory usage.
~ Sandaruwan
#22 by Robin on October 20th, 2009
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Thanks for the update. Works like a charm with my 2.8.4 version of Wordpress.
However I’m missing the feature to see the text entered in Picasa with each photo to show on issue picture instead of ‘Link will open in new window’. If this is done I can use your more stable Picasa sidebar instead of the unstable.
This plugin does have this feature but is unstable:
http://www.cnet.ro/wordpress/picasa-widget/
I hope you can add this feature soon so I can only run your plugin.
#23 by Ivan Mortensen on October 20th, 2009
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I also have the memory problem, and I try to define memory, but no help, my host has a limt set of memory.
#24 by Omi Azad on October 20th, 2009
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Followed the instruction and got
[code]Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 347355 bytes) in /home/netecgro/public_html/omi/my-blog/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 452[/code]
#25 by pashen on October 25th, 2009
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picasa fotos not found any username
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#26 by Shawn on November 14th, 2009
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I’m getting it to work, but the photos line up vertically. Is it possible with this plugin to have the thumbnails be 3×3 squares like this flickrRSS plugin? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flickr-rss/.
Thanks
#27 by Brock on November 14th, 2009
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I’ve used your plugin for a while and really like it. Lately, however, my photos are not showing up. I’ve also noticed after entering my username and clicking “save changes” or “refresh cache” on the plugin settings page, the body of the page is blank after the page reloads (not the whole page, just the “Picasa Photos” settings.
Also, there are not albums listed in the albums drop-down box, so I assume the plug-in is just not connecting to my account.
Is the username supposed to be my google/gmail/picasa username? I’ve set the url of my picasa gallery to be different from my google username, so I wasn’t sure which to use. I’ve tried both but neither seems to work. Any ideas?
#28 by johny why on November 19th, 2009
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hey, LOVE this plugin. But, if possible, PLEASE do NOT display photos from picasaweb albums which i have been set to “Unlisted”. Or, if you can, provide a checkbox in your control panel to ignore Unlisted albums.
THANKS
#29 by johny why on November 21st, 2009
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love this plugin (especially the thickbox integration)!
but, would be great if it would ignore picasaweb albums marked as “Unlisted” or “Sign-in required to view”.
thanks!
#30 by johny why on November 24th, 2009
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seems to be a sporadic bug in thickbox. i’m seeing double images. here is screenshot:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_yJ0zKAWYfxo/SwuvUpkTzqI/AAAAAAAAAKo/gc0yJIeqNX0/Thickbox%20Bug.jpg
#31 by Farokh Monajem on November 28th, 2009
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I noticed today that you have misspelled Refresh on the button in the settings of your plugin. Thought you would like to know.
#32 by pipi95 on December 25th, 2009
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Type your comment here
Ya, I get this error too，I wander how to fix it！
#33 by donagorr on December 29th, 2009
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Bravo, you were visited with simply excellent idea